The Grinder, the Puddle and the Taped Lead

First five minutes:

1. Isolate the supply at the cabin before anyone touches the casualty or the grinder. The grinder is still in a puddle on a live lead, so the hazard is still present and the next person to reach for it becomes a second casualty.
2. If the casualty is still in contact with the equipment, do not touch him with bare hands - isolate first, or use something dry and insulating.
3. Lock off or unplug the lead so it cannot be re-energised, and keep others back from the area.
4. Assess the casualty: airway, breathing, circulation, and look for burn marks - entry and exit wounds, since current can enter the hand and leave elsewhere. Check for any other injury from the fall.
5. Call 112/999. Anyone who has taken a shock should be medically assessed even if they feel fine, because abnormal heart rhythms can develop some time afterwards.
6. Send someone for the first aid kit and a trained first aider, keep the casualty warm and at rest, and do not let him drive or be left alone.

Why the van is wrong: it removes him from supervision, treats a potentially serious electrical injury as a shock to be walked off, ignores the ongoing hazard, and delays both medical assessment and the recording of the incident. Bottled water is not first aid for an electric shock.

What: an entry in the accident record book the same day, covering date and time, the person's name and role, what he was doing, what happened, the injury (burn to the hand, plus the fall), the treatment given, who attended, witnesses, the equipment and lead involved, and the condition of the supply. The damaged lead and plug should be quarantined as evidence, not repaired and put back into use.

Report: to the employer and site management immediately so it can be assessed against the reporting requirements for workplace accidents and dangerous occurrences. An electric shock of this kind - particularly one needing medical treatment or hospital attendance - is exactly the sort of event that may need to be notified to the regulator, and that decision cannot be made by a supervisor deciding to wait until Friday.

Why delay fails:

• The injured person's condition can change, and the record should be made while it is accurate.
• Evidence disappears. A scuffed lead gets taped up, swapped out, or lost over a weekend, and the root cause becomes unprovable.
• Witness memory fades within hours, and the accounts start to differ.
• Delay weakens any insurance claim, undermines the investigation, and looks like concealment.
• There is a legal duty to report and record promptly, not at a convenient moment.

Underlying failures:

• Wrong voltage for the environment. 230 V portable tools on a wet construction site should not be the fallback option; 110 V centre-tapped-to-earth equipment is the normal expectation, with battery tools often better still.
• No RCD protection at the cabin socket, so a earth fault through the puddle and the operator had no fast disconnection.
• A defective lead in service. A scuffed sheath taped over is a damaged lead, not a repaired one. There is no evidence of pre-use checks or portable appliance testing.
• Poor cable management - a 50 m lead routed through standing water instead of being run overhead or away from the wet.
• Planning failure - the transformer being 'in use elsewhere' means the equipment needed for the job was not provided.
• No nominated first aider and no clear emergency plan, with A&E 12 km away.

Controls: 110 V or battery tools as default; RCD protection and regular testing where 230 V is genuinely needed; documented pre-use inspection and PAT regime for leads and tools; cables routed clear of water and protected from damage; a nominated first aider and posted emergency information including the nearest A&E; induction briefing on reporting damage rather than taping it up.